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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

News and Notes: Tuesday Edition

Above, Aaron Osgood from Overlake (WA) High School senior to Cornell senior. This weekend is Senior Weekend for Cornell's home contests against Brown and Yale. Below, some news and notes...

Noah Rosenstein, impressed with the crowd turnout, discusses in the Daily Pennsylvanian the large attendance on hand for Saturday's Cornell at Penn game. He writes, "Saturday night’s loss to Cornell. Between Feb Club, Greeks at the Palestra and a three-game winning streak, campus was a-buzz about the sequel to Penn’s epic upset of the then-No. 22 Big Red last year. The turnout was certainly there — an above-average 6,874 — and the Quakers certainly thrived on it as they erased a 15-point hole in the second half." Rosenstein does not address the fact that a very significant percentage of the crowd was made up of Cornell alumni with several area clubs in attendance. In fact, in recent years, the Cornell game has always been the Palestra's biggest draw. Last year, the Cornell at Penn game drew 4,332 on a Friday night, despite the fact that Penn was suffering through one of its worst seasons in program history. The crowd was the largest Palestra crowd for an Ivy game all year long during '09-'10 and was larger than Penn's home openers vs. Delaware and Drexel. This season's edition of Cornell at Penn even outdrew the Palestra crowds for visits from Davidson (the home opener), Harvard and Villanova. In short, Cornell is the big ticket for the Palestra and Cornell's area alumni is a big reason why.

Challenge Magazine writes of March Madness, "In 2010, men’s college basketball fans were treated to a competitive tournament, complete with stunning upsets and heartbreaking finishes. Cornell University played the Cinderella role. It was the first time an Ivy League team advanced to the Sweet 16 since 1979."

OnlineBasketballBetting.com compares St. John's veteran roster to Cornell from a year ago and writes, "Senior experience is vital during tournament time, as the 2010 Cornell squad can attest. The 2011 Red Storm boasts nine hungry and experienced seniors who are all anxious to prove they belong in the Big Dance."

Kunal Gupta of the Columbia Spectator is frustrated with the Lions' mediocrity in basketball and writes, "And for anyone who thinks a stranglehold on the top can’t be broken, just look at men’s basketball in the Ivy League. Penn and Princeton, the Killer P’s, dominated league play, taking all but three outright titles between 1963 and 2007.(Columbia was one of them, winning in 1968.) All of a sudden, in 2008, Cornell burst onto the scene, knocking the Killer P’s out of power on its way to three straight titles and a run to the Sweet Sixteen in 2010. Cornell broke through in 2008, and Harvard looks ready to be the next one, if not this season, then certainly in the coming years."

* With a road sweep of Dartmouth and Harvard this weekend, Princeton (22-5, 10-1) can clinch its first Ivy League men's basketball title since 2004. The Tigers took control of first place when Harvard (21-5, 10-2) was upset 70-69 Saturday at Yale.

* Yale won by taking care of the ball (3 turnovers) and by forcing Harvard big man Keith Wright into a 3-for-12 shooting night. Yale center Greg Mangano had five blocks.

* Cornell's improvement over the last seven games goes hand-in-hand with the increased production of senior forward Mark Coury.

Coury has scored in double figures in four of the last seven games, including back-to-back 13-point efforts last weekend. His minutes have been steady, at just over 20 per game. He remains one of the league's best positional defenders, and is as good a trapping forward as I've seen in six seasons covering Ivy League hoops.

Coury, along with Aaron Osgood and Adam Wire, will be honored in a senior ceremony this weekend. Each played a significant role for two, if not three, Ivy League championship teams.

* Princeton forward Kareem Maddox was picked Ivy men's player of the week. Yale freshman Jeremiah Kreisberg was the rookie of the week.

Brian Kotloff of the Daily Pennsylvanian writes, "So many words can describe Penn basketball’s 2010-11 season, depending on whether your highball is half-full or half-empty — thrilling or heartbreaking, a step in the right direction or a missed opportunity, inconsistent or intermittently great. Add to that list, after another tough-to-swallow defeat Saturday against Cornell, the dreaded, two-word label inflicted on teams who fall short this time of year: ‘mathematically eliminated.’"

Jon Jaques ('10) tweeted his reaction to Cornell's victory over Penn on Saturday night at the Palestra.

Cornell RPI Watch: The RPI (Rating Percentage Index) is a measure of strength of schedule and how a team does against that schedule. It does not consider the margin of victory, but only whether or not a team won and where the game was played (home/away/neutral court). The formula is 25% team winning percentage (WP), 50% opponents' average winning percentage (OWP), and 25% opponents' opponents' average winning percentage (OOWP). (See: CollegeRPI.com for a further explanation of the formula.) The RPI may be the most influential factor in NCAA Tournament seeding. Cornell's RPI rank as of March 1 is No. 225 out of 347 total Division I teams. While neither the Ken Pomeroy or Jeff Sagarin rankings are used by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee, the KenPom.com site ranks Cornell No. 202 in the nation, while the USA Today Sagarin rankings have Cornell at No. 216. Both sites are predominantly used by fans and the media.

Game Recaps-Below are links to our game recaps from each of Cornell's games this season. Associated press recaps courtesy of Rivals.com/YahooSports.com are always available by clicking on Cornell's schedule/results on the right column of this blog.